Answer: They put away their Joy Division 12-inches and pull out their imported copy of Magical Mystery Tour.
And they should give the video another spin while they're at it, only after ingesting the substance of their choice. You know what the video for "Sowing the Seeds of Love" makes me think of? You know the end of Yellow Submarine, where the Blue Meanies suddenly find themselves covered in flowers, and they finally release all the love they'd been repressing inside themselves for thousands upon thousands of years, and they hold hands with Jeremy the Boob and "It's All Too Much" starts blaring out of the speakers and the movie virtually explodes with drug-induced pheromones of peace and sunshine? This video is like that. These two sad sack wallflowers who hardly even seemed capable of getting up in the morning without a healthy dose of antidepressants (see: "World, Mad" and "Shelter, Pale") had finally busted out of their funk and were letting the whole human race know it. The word this song and video bring to mind is "opulent." Tears for Fears didn't worry about going too colorful, too dreamy, too silly on this one. They let their imagination run rampant. It's what the moment called for.
Also: I've heard it said that, once upon a time, effects in videos weren't made with computers. This means that they look like effects, but that also means those effects still have a tactile weight and movement to them that later effects arguably would not. I can feel that box spinning in the sky. I can feel that stalk shooting up out of the ground. I can feel that giant stone face opening its doors (which are placed on its forehead?). I can feel that golden orb smashing into the eye of the illuminati. Then there's the part where a flaming ring opens up a portal inside a newspaper, and we find ourselves being sucked into a vortex of spinning fish, Buddha statues, doves, and ... Egyptian ankhs? Then, once an abalone shell gets the hell out of the way, Roland and Curt start marching through a field of ... those see-sawing bird paperweights? Look out for flying violins, umbrellas, and a gravity-defying Brunhilde! Suddenly Roland tosses a book our way, and the video quickly transforms into the video for Tom Tom Club's "Genius of Love." Then Roland finds himself literally sowing seeds in what appears to be ... Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World? The final blossoming of the sunflower in outer space (how would it survive in space?) feels appropriately orgiastic. In hindsight, perhaps these two should have saved up at least a couple of drops of all that positive energy for the follow-up album.
Given that their very band name was a term originated by psychologist Arthur Janov, the creator of Primal Scream therapy whose brief stint treating John Lennon greatly inspired John's first post-Beatles album (John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band), it shouldn't be a surprise that Tears for Fears were gargantuan Beatle freaks, but when "Sowing the Seeds of Love" came out in 1989, I think it was viewed as, shall we say, a departure.
"Sowing the Seeds of Love" wins my vote for greatest Beatles homage of the '80s. It's like the "Beatles" of '80s Beatles homages, if you will. Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith stole an entire jar of Beatles moonshine from the country market and they chugged the whole gallon. A touch of "Rain" here, a smattering of "All You Need is Love" there ... you name it, they nicked it. A dash of McCartney's toenail clippings, a splinter of Ringo's drumstick, a lock of George Martin's hair, a drop of Yoko's urine ... they took it all and went to town.
What Tears for Fears did with their Beatles homage that, in my opinion, even ELO or Oasis never quite managed to do, was turn it into its own little six-minute Abbey Road medley. "Sowing the Seeds of Love" has enough mini-sections and unexpected digressions to sow the seeds of eight separate Beatles rip-offs. Let's start at the top:
0:13 - The verse melody, which lifts its lyrical rhythm, and siren-like organ riff, from "I am the Walrus" (?)
0:40 - I'm fairly certain they simply flipped over the "Walrus" single, played "Hello Goodbye," looked at each other knowingly and declared, "There's our chorus!"
1:48 - Dreamy Interlude #1, complete with faint choral singing right out of the Let It Be version of "Across the Universe," topped off by what I'm fairly certain are R2D2 farts
2:22 - Roland and his vocoder take center stage ("Feel the pain/Talk about it") in a section that, in a typical '80s pop song, would essentially be the bridge that immediately precedes the final chorus, but whoa-ho-ho my friends, this song isn't even halfway over yet.
3:12 - Dreamy Interlude #2, set to the chorus melody, sporting trumpets flown in from the "Penny Lane" Express
3:28 - Someone shouts "OK!" in his raunchiest James Brown voice and the track takes a quick detour to Memphis (or perhaps that's Billy Preston on keys?)
3:55 - With a hard-panned guitar lick straight out of Harrison's worst meditation-induced nightmares, and a drum fill doctored to the teeth with what sounds like backward masking (?), the adventure swiftly returns to where it all began - the "Walrus"-like verse melody.
4:48 - Finally, at nearly the five-minute mark, the last chorus, and the "Hey Jude"-style fade-out. Rejoice, for Odysseus has been reunited with his Penelope.
But if the music of "Sowing the Seeds of Love" could be described as delightfully '67, I would describe the lyrics as intensely '89. Seriously, no one could create hummable radio hits that somehow sported stealthily barbed political overtones quite like those '80s British synth-pop groups, I tell ya:
"Sowing the Seeds of Love" wins my vote for greatest Beatles homage of the '80s. It's like the "Beatles" of '80s Beatles homages, if you will. Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith stole an entire jar of Beatles moonshine from the country market and they chugged the whole gallon. A touch of "Rain" here, a smattering of "All You Need is Love" there ... you name it, they nicked it. A dash of McCartney's toenail clippings, a splinter of Ringo's drumstick, a lock of George Martin's hair, a drop of Yoko's urine ... they took it all and went to town.
What Tears for Fears did with their Beatles homage that, in my opinion, even ELO or Oasis never quite managed to do, was turn it into its own little six-minute Abbey Road medley. "Sowing the Seeds of Love" has enough mini-sections and unexpected digressions to sow the seeds of eight separate Beatles rip-offs. Let's start at the top:
0:13 - The verse melody, which lifts its lyrical rhythm, and siren-like organ riff, from "I am the Walrus" (?)
0:40 - I'm fairly certain they simply flipped over the "Walrus" single, played "Hello Goodbye," looked at each other knowingly and declared, "There's our chorus!"
1:48 - Dreamy Interlude #1, complete with faint choral singing right out of the Let It Be version of "Across the Universe," topped off by what I'm fairly certain are R2D2 farts
2:22 - Roland and his vocoder take center stage ("Feel the pain/Talk about it") in a section that, in a typical '80s pop song, would essentially be the bridge that immediately precedes the final chorus, but whoa-ho-ho my friends, this song isn't even halfway over yet.
3:12 - Dreamy Interlude #2, set to the chorus melody, sporting trumpets flown in from the "Penny Lane" Express
3:28 - Someone shouts "OK!" in his raunchiest James Brown voice and the track takes a quick detour to Memphis (or perhaps that's Billy Preston on keys?)
3:55 - With a hard-panned guitar lick straight out of Harrison's worst meditation-induced nightmares, and a drum fill doctored to the teeth with what sounds like backward masking (?), the adventure swiftly returns to where it all began - the "Walrus"-like verse melody.
4:48 - Finally, at nearly the five-minute mark, the last chorus, and the "Hey Jude"-style fade-out. Rejoice, for Odysseus has been reunited with his Penelope.
But if the music of "Sowing the Seeds of Love" could be described as delightfully '67, I would describe the lyrics as intensely '89. Seriously, no one could create hummable radio hits that somehow sported stealthily barbed political overtones quite like those '80s British synth-pop groups, I tell ya:
High time we made a standAnd shook up the views of the common manAnd the love train rides from coast to coastDJ is the man we love the mostCould you be, could you be squeaky cleanAnd smash any hope of democracy?As the headline says you're free to chooseThere's an egg on your face and mud on your shoesOne of these days they're gonna call it the blues, yeahSowing the seeds of love(Anything is possible)Seeds of love(When you're sowing the seeds of love)Sowing the seedsI spy tears in their eyesThey look to the skies for some kind of divineIntervention, food goes to wasteSo nice to eat, so nice to tastePolitician grannie with your high idealsHave you no idea how the majority feels?So without love and a promised landWe're fools to the rules of a government planKick out the style, bring back the jam
The bitter phrases Orzabal peppers the song with are so oblique that I doubt anyone out in Main Street USA would even understand which aspects of world affairs, precisely, he was genuinely objecting to, but at least he sounds like he's got stuff on his mind. "As the headline says you're free to choose/There's egg on your face and mud on your shoes"? "So without love and a promised land/We're fools to the rules of a government plan"? He's talking about somebody else's country, right? "An end to need/And the politics of greed"? I mean hey, who's against that? I'm pretty sure the "Politician grannie with your high ideals" would have been a reference to a certain Iron Lady, who ... my God, was she still in office in 1989? What the hell was wrong with those people? And finally, what's with the implied diss of Paul Weller's Style Council ("Kick out the style, bring back the Jam")? Guess Roland wasn't digging the non-threatening Yuppie affectations of sophisti-pop? Or perhaps Weller forgot to call him on his birthday, I don't know.
Although he occasionally inches toward dopiness ("I love a sunflower"?), what I admire about Orzabal's outlook here is that, in the face of relentlessly gloomy news, he is a man who nevertheless advocates positivity. While not suggesting indifference, I wouldn't say he suggests anger either. Could it really be possible to tackle injustice without succumbing to snotty self-righteousness (AKA becoming Jello Biafra)? Perhaps many on the political left today might want to give this 33-year-old chestnut another spin.
Although he occasionally inches toward dopiness ("I love a sunflower"?), what I admire about Orzabal's outlook here is that, in the face of relentlessly gloomy news, he is a man who nevertheless advocates positivity. While not suggesting indifference, I wouldn't say he suggests anger either. Could it really be possible to tackle injustice without succumbing to snotty self-righteousness (AKA becoming Jello Biafra)? Perhaps many on the political left today might want to give this 33-year-old chestnut another spin.
And they should give the video another spin while they're at it, only after ingesting the substance of their choice. You know what the video for "Sowing the Seeds of Love" makes me think of? You know the end of Yellow Submarine, where the Blue Meanies suddenly find themselves covered in flowers, and they finally release all the love they'd been repressing inside themselves for thousands upon thousands of years, and they hold hands with Jeremy the Boob and "It's All Too Much" starts blaring out of the speakers and the movie virtually explodes with drug-induced pheromones of peace and sunshine? This video is like that. These two sad sack wallflowers who hardly even seemed capable of getting up in the morning without a healthy dose of antidepressants (see: "World, Mad" and "Shelter, Pale") had finally busted out of their funk and were letting the whole human race know it. The word this song and video bring to mind is "opulent." Tears for Fears didn't worry about going too colorful, too dreamy, too silly on this one. They let their imagination run rampant. It's what the moment called for.
Also: I've heard it said that, once upon a time, effects in videos weren't made with computers. This means that they look like effects, but that also means those effects still have a tactile weight and movement to them that later effects arguably would not. I can feel that box spinning in the sky. I can feel that stalk shooting up out of the ground. I can feel that giant stone face opening its doors (which are placed on its forehead?). I can feel that golden orb smashing into the eye of the illuminati. Then there's the part where a flaming ring opens up a portal inside a newspaper, and we find ourselves being sucked into a vortex of spinning fish, Buddha statues, doves, and ... Egyptian ankhs? Then, once an abalone shell gets the hell out of the way, Roland and Curt start marching through a field of ... those see-sawing bird paperweights? Look out for flying violins, umbrellas, and a gravity-defying Brunhilde! Suddenly Roland tosses a book our way, and the video quickly transforms into the video for Tom Tom Club's "Genius of Love." Then Roland finds himself literally sowing seeds in what appears to be ... Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World? The final blossoming of the sunflower in outer space (how would it survive in space?) feels appropriately orgiastic. In hindsight, perhaps these two should have saved up at least a couple of drops of all that positive energy for the follow-up album.
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